Garmin Fenix 6 & Updates Today in beta
These new features are in beta. I wouldn’t recommend installing them unless you are willing to accept the risk. That said, Garmin‘s pre-release betas are generally better than most. You will need to install these manually and instructions are given on how to do that in the links below.
Recommended: Garmin Fenix 7 Review
Of particular interest to me is the SLEEP WIDGET and the other key additions have been highlighted in bold text below.
For indoor trainer-workouts check out dcrainmaker’s post where he points out that Garmin’s Training Status metric (finally) includes workouts recorded inZwift, TrainerRoad, The Sufferfest and Tacx App Workouts
Must Read: Fenix 6 Bible – aka very detailed review
Headlines
- Added the ability to rate the perceived effort and feel of a Run, Bike, or Swim activity. The prompts appear during activity save. Go to [Activity] Settings > Self Evaluation for options.
- Added sleep tracking widget with sleep score and insights by Firstbeat Analytics
- Added metabolic calories into the total calories reported in the calories data field and recorded in the activity file.
- Added setting to enable/disable workout audio prompts.
- Updated workout audio prompts for hundredths distance precision.
- Updated Intensity Minutes determinations to align with guidance from CDC.
- Improved feedback on stress level readings.
- Improved calorie calculations for activities using a power meter.
- Improved results for daily Body Battery calculations.
- Improved visibility of Climb Pro alert page.
- Improved power meter calibration and settings.
Fenix 6 series
Garmin Fenix 5 Plus Series
I don’t think Garmin shares the love with you guys…just some bug fixes here folks
Hopefully with this beta coming to F6 series which was earlier released to the 245, 745 and 945 watches means … “MAYBE” … a 255 or 655 watch. Otherwise, I think this will be it for this year.
I was speaking with the Garmin Fenix support team and she said there was a freeze and did not think there would be any new watches F7. However, I also spoke with the Forerunner team, and he kind of hinted at maybe a new runner-focused watch this summer, 255 or 655? There are no FCC applications.
Do you have any ideas or thoughts?
Fenix6 beta firmware catching up with 945 stable release? That’s odd. I thought sleep widget and RPE post exercise was on Fenix for a long time. It seems we 945 users were not the last ones to get the feature. 🙂
Fênix 6 here, got the new sleep widget a while ago, but still don’t have the RPE post exercise thing and no new Fitness Age calculatione that 945 got. Not sure why the difference, but they are different dev branches apparently.
Seems like they also pushed an update to Broadcast HR via bluetooth on the FRx45 devices. My FR245M previously only allowed Broadcast HR from quick settings via ANT. Had to use the Virtual Run activity as a work around to get HR data to Zwift. But using that activity meant no proper cycling stats and training load was sent to GC.
This makes recording Zwift activities so much easier. I simply send speed, cadence and wrist HR to my PC via bluetooth, and Zwift updates my Strava and GC including TL. No need to for managing duplicate activity recordings, and no need for missing out on wrist HR on Zwift. Garmin is nicely filling in the gaps this year (on some devices).
yep, that ones been left hanging for months. glad it’s fixed